


Cantabile Dreams

by Fweeble



Series: Cantabile Dreams [1]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, F/M, M/M, Unrequited Love, incompatible orientations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-12 08:50:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3350663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fweeble/pseuds/Fweeble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Hide dreams of the future.</p><p>--</p><p>Alternatively: Nagachika Hideyoshi loves Kaneki Ken, everyone knows this. Nagachika Hideyoshi loves Kaneki Ken, has since they were children, and will continue to do so until he dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once, I spent long nights discussing the end of TG with Frey, the inevitable TouKen end, and Hide’s lifelong mission to ensure Kaneki Ken smiles with happiness. This assumes Hide a) is still human after the time skip and b)joined Aogiri Tree and therefore formed close a relationship with Ayato andHinami.
> 
> Huge thank you to thekimchiburger and feverly for taking the time and effort to painstakingly beta the word vomit I sent them and nitpicking until it is what you see now. Any and all mistakes are all due to my error. 
> 
> Title lovingly stolen from fev.

  
Her hands had been so much larger than his, wrinkled and calloused at the tips, but they had always stroked his hair gently on those summer afternoons he laid sprawled across the living room floor, his head in her lap. She wove fantastic tales of the past, of her old homeland, and the night she met his grandfather. Hide had always fallen asleep to the gentle lull of her voice, the comforting whisper of her fingers against his scalp.   
  
“You see, Hideyoshi, dreams are mysterious things. I dreamed of your grandfather for years before I met him. When I finally saw him that day, soaked in the evening rain, I knew he was the one I was meant to spend the rest of my life with.”  
  
Hide remembers the way she would smile down at him, eyes crinkling further, once-blonde wisps framing her kind face as she told him, “And one day, you will know too.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Sometimes, Hide dreams of the future.  
  
In it, he lives in an impossibly large, sprawling Tokyo apartment. It is furnished with clean, efficient stainless steel kitchen appliances, modern furniture with their sharp edges and minimalist designs, and large floor-to-ceiling windows, light spilling in. Hide’s decidedly garish throw pillows adorn the sleek couch Kaneki had lovingly picked out, a tacky, but warm, blanket half-lost under its cushions and the kitschy pot holders clash with the sleek metal of the kitchen. The vast collection of video games, Hide’s secret pride and joy, are snugly situated in the corner of the living room clashing horrifically with the vaguely impressionist art hanging on the walls.  
  
The Kaneki in his dreams always sighs a little at the tacky, rainbow rug on the floor, the cartoon novelty mugs in the cabinet, and is always mollified when handed dark, steaming coffee. They sit together at their kitchen table, with their breakfast –sometimes western, sometimes traditional, whatever catches a sleep addled Hide’s whimsy–and Kaneki, the responsible one, reads the newspaper as Hide browses through the highlights on his phone looking for interesting headlines.   
  
Kaneki washes the dishes while Hide, still in t-shirt and boxers, wanders into the bathroom to make himself presentable for the waking world.  
  
It always ends with Hide fixing Kaneki’s tie before the other man walks out their front door with the same promise, “I’ll be back,” and peace filling Hide as he replies, “Come back home safely.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Hide at eighteen is just as certain as Hide at eight: He is meant to live his life with Kaneki Ken.   
  
He still dreams of the interior decorating disaster that is his future apartment, his future life, still dreams of them, of himself as an adult, of Kaneki as an adult, and their quiet everyday mornings together. He dreams of the way Kaneki’s hair looks rumpled in golden sunlight, the absolutely grumpy squint he sends Hide after stumbling out of bed before shuffling into the bathroom.   
  
He dreams of the sunlight’s soft glow on Kaneki’s skin when he wakes up in the morning, the secret kiss he drops on Kaneki’s forehead before rolling out of bed, the groggy peck on the cheek he gets before he plates breakfast, and the goodbye kiss he leaves on Kaneki’s cheek before the other man is out the door.  
  
The big things don’t change, but the little things do.   
  
  
\--  
  
  
Kaneki is brilliant –he can pass any class he sets his mind to, can pull theory from text and mold it into reality.   
  
Kaneki is dense and has always failed to navigate emotional developments without Hide surreptitiously guiding him from the sidelines.  
  
Kaneki Ken, if not already, will soon be deeply in love with Kirishima Touka.  
  
Hide knows this.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Because Hide is blessed with the foresight of wizened mages in every JRPG ever created, what he foresees comes true.  
  
It is five years after he sat in a coffee shop with Kaneki and saw the inevitable, and the dust of the CCG’s collapse and Aogiri Tree’s dissolution has yet to settle, the wounded have yet to be treated, and Hide looks up with Ayato’s arm slung over his shoulders. He scans for Kaneki –Haise, Kaneki, it really doesn’t matter –and finds the man helping Touka up, eyes soft and searching.   
  
“About time,” Hide mutters, the edges of the dream fading as reality sets in.  
  
Ayato, because he is an adult and fully in control of his emotions, sends them both reeling into the floor with his apocalyptic outburst.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Sometimes, Hide finds a drunk Kaneki on his doorstep in the twilight hours of the morning, wobbly and agitated.   
  
He slurs and hiccups, red-faced and indignant, about the last fight he had with Touka before dissolving into confused tears because he doesn’t understand why things are never as smooth as they should be, as he wishes they were. He is always miserable as Hide feeds him coffee and pets his back soothingly and obediently allows Hide to bundle him in layers and layers of blankets on Hide’s bed until he drifts to sleep.  
  
Hide commandeers his couch those nights and wills himself not to dream.  
  
The mornings are never the right mornings.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
He borrows Hinami on nights when everything is particularly difficult.  
  
They curl up in his bed, her hand stroking his hair as he listens to her heartbeat. If he closes his eyes, he can hear his grandmother’s voice and feel the warmth of the setting summer sun on his skin.  
  
“You should find someone,” Hinami used to say the first few nights. “Go on a few dates.”  
  
“How dare you. I have the heart of a pure maiden,” he’d mutter into the soft fabric of her shirt. “I only date those I love.”  
  
She’d giggle softly, then, her fingers threading through his hair.  
  
Now, she doesn’t say anything the nights she stays over, but Hide takes strength in her presence, her silent support.   
  
  
\--  
  
  
“Hide.”  
  
He knows before Kaneki says anything, can see it in the wetness in the other man’s yes, the way his entire body vibrates with joy, disbelief, relief.  
  
“She said yes. Touka said yes. I –we’re –Touka and I are enganged!”  
  
“Congratulations! Have you guys decided on a date?”  
  
And it’s comforting, listening to Kaneki ramble about how he nearly threw up on Touka after proposing, he was so nervous, how Touka would like an autumn wedding to avoid the summer heat and winter chill and how he prefers the subtle theme of change that comes with an autumn wedding. He smiles into his glass of beer as he imagines the life Kaneki will lead– of pleasant, lazy weekend mornings where neither want to get out of bed, quiet everyday breakfasts and familiar dinners.  
  
“I’m happy for you, man. I wouldn’t wish anything else for you.” And it rings true once he says it, a silent promise to himself. A wish for Kaneki Ken, Sasaki Haise, his most cherished person, to live a blessed and happy life.   
  
“I know,” Kaneki says, turning hopeful eyes to Hide, “Which is why –I mean. Would you be my best man?”  
  
“Of course! I’d be offended if you picked anyone else.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
The time between the proposal and the wedding passes in a flurry of activity and Hide wakes up one August morning wondering how December had melted into mid-fall.   
  
He takes the subway to Ayato’s apartment without bothering to brush his teeth or hair and fully surrenders himself to the annoyed hands of The Bride’s Brother, who, for all intents and purposes, is the One Eyed Owl of this wedding endeavor. He swoops around his apartment, dark and foreboding, barking orders into his headset as Hinami calmly salvages the destroyed remains of whatever poor sap gets in the way of Ayato’s warpath.  
  
Hide sits bleary eyed on a stool as Ayatao points at his hair, unable to emit anything but a disgusted noise before stomping away.  Hinami, ever flawless and understanding, sets about the task of wrangling Hide’s unmanageable hair into some semblance of neat while Hide borrows a new toothbrush and slowly works on fixing his terrible morning breath.   
  
“Look at you, I knew it. I was right to keep your outfit here, you didn’t even brush your teeth, I bet you would’ve forgotten it at your apartment.” Ayato scowls out the window, fingers drumming impatiently on his arm, clearly having been put on hold by whatever poor soul is on the other end of his headset. “At least you showered before coming.”  
  
Hinami hums as she untangles his hair, so Hide blows bubbles and lets toothpaste drip into his lap and tries not to grin too hard when Ayato goes white with fury.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Because he is the best man, and a brilliant one, Hide stays out of Ayato’s way once they reach the venue and dedicates his time to making sure Kaneki doesn’t have a nervous breakdown and show up bald at the altar.  
  
“I don’t think I can do this,” Kaneki despairs, pulling at the seams of his cuffs. “I can’t. I don’t deserve her. I –I…” He looks into the mirror, tugs faintly at the bowtie that Hinami had tied for him six minutes ago before sweeping back out to attend to other important matters. “The things I’ve done…”  
  
Gently, Hide rights the crooked tie, soothes Kaneki’s hair back into place. “Kaneki…” He sets both hands on Kaneki’s shoulders and waits for grey eyes to meet his. “When you look into her eyes, what do you see?”  
  
And Kaneki, who has always been enthralled by the intricacies of words and their meaning but has always failed at conveying them, breathes out the word, “Everything,” as if he has finally discovered the meaning to life and Hide can only smile as his heart clenches.  
  
“Then that’s your answer, isn’t it? You have your entire life to become the man she deserves.” Carefully, Hide threads the boutonniere through the buttonhole and straightens Kaneki’s lapel. “Now get out there and marry the girl of your dreams.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
When they kiss, their first kiss as husband and wife, Hide cannot stop the tears and smiles harder, claps louder, to make up for it.  
  
He takes his turn to dance with Touka and he squeezes her hand gently when he tells her, “I wish you both all the happiness in the world.”  
  
She smiles, resplendent, and says with her voice caught on the sharp edges of emotion and eyes wet with tears, “Thank you.”  
  
He wipes away her tears and laughs, “It’s your wedding day; save your tears for after your first fight!”  
  
She smacks his shoulder and he laughs harder, twirling her as she giggles.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Hide lasts nearly two months before he invites himself over to Ayato’s apartment with a duffel bag of essentials and the world’s most practiced kicked puppy expression on his face. Ayato makes a show of giving Hide the dirtiest looks as he lets him in while Hinami, who is ever omniscient, pulls out an extra futon before disappearing into Ayato’s room to pull out their own and arranging them in front of the television.  
  
“I object to this emotional polyamory you are trying to build with my girlfriend, Nagachika.” Ayato grouses as he pops the first Lord of the Rings movie into the DVD player and settles onto the futons on the other side of Hide. “This is going too far,” he asserts as he passes the senbei crackers and beer they keep on hand, just for Hide, and makes sure the extra-large blanket covers all of them before hunkering down and pressing play.  
  
“Thanks,” Hide says wetly.  
  
He cries into his pillow when Sam follows Frodo with the words, “And I’m coming with you.”  
  
Ayato quietly puts in the next DVD and Hinami strokes his hair.  
  
Hide feels raw and too open and too vulnerable, undone and broken, so he doesn’t say anything as Aragorn breaks his foot kicking the Uruk-hai’s helmet and screams in agony.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
She is 53.5 centimeters and 3742 grams and the most beautiful red, wrinkly baby Hide has ever seen. He cradles her head in his arms, terrified  he will drop her, when Touka, sweaty, exhausted, and still stunningly gorgeous, says, “We still have to name her.”  
  
“You guys have had nine months to pick out a name. This is child abuse. How can you leave this princess unnamed?” He eyes the new parents critically, unable to hold back his disbelief.  
  
Kaneki makes a noise of distress and Ayato’s expression turns murderous as Touka says, “They have no naming sense whatsoever. Kaneki wanted to name her Ai.  _Ai_. Ayato suggested Sadako.”  
  
“What about you?” Hide prevaricates, because surely Touka wouldn’t leave her daughter  _nameles_ s.  
  
“Do you know what she tried to name her stuffed animals as a kid?? What you’re suggesting is tor—”  
  
“What Ayato means is that Touka doesn’t have the best track record either,” Kaneki interrupts smoothly, hands firmly clasping his wife's and ensuring his brother-in-law’s continued existence.  
  
Hide gazes down at the sleeping child in his arms, wonder and affection spreading warmly in his chest, and says, “I’ve always liked the name Emi.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Kaneki, who is back in school and juggling a part time job, and Touka, who has managed to seamlessly slot herself into a research project on ghoul health through smart internships and a grudging recommendation from Nishiki, are two new parents who are blessed. Blessed with a mutual friend who loves children, is particularly weak to their kid, and newly unemployed and therefore available for babysitting duty while he studies for his exams.  
  
That’s the story and Hide’s sticking with it.  
  
Emi starts to get fussy, eyes wet and cheeks puffy, so Hide picks her up and soothes her as he warms up her milk.   
  
“It’s okay sweetie, don’t cry. I’m here, no reason to cry. You’ll never be alone.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Emi is four and utterly spoiled.   
  
She commands attention from her throne on Hide’s lap, looking imperiously down at the other children in the daycare as she declares Nagachika-sensei as hers.  
  
“Emi will marry him when Emi grows up,” she asserts primly even when Hide takes her home after daycare has ended and Kaneki and Touka have arrived to relieve Hide of his extended babysitting duties.   
  
“But what about marrying papa when you grow up?” Kaneki asks, the very picture of a broken father. “Isn’t that every little girl’s dream?”  
  
“ _No_ ,” she insists, stamping her foot in frustration, spots of red spreading on her cheeks. “Emi will marry Hi-chan.”  
  
Touka just smiles and picks up Asahi who is ever sensitive to his older sister’s moods and has begun tearing up in reaction to her petulance. “You can marry Hi-chan if you want to, mama will support you,” she assures indulgently as she takes Asahi to his room.   
  
Kaneki stares after his wife, shocked at her cruel betrayal. “Traitor!” He accuses.  
  
Emi glows with happiness. “Emi will marry Hi-chan! Mama says so!”  
  
Hide picks up Emi and whispers, “I have a secret to tell Emi-chan.”  
  
“Okay!”  
  
“That means papa cannot hear it,” Hide says, looking pointedly at Kaneki.   
  
When Kaneki has sulkily left the room, presumably to spend time with his son, the only family member who truly loves him, Hide sits down on the couch, the excited child on his knee. “Emi, I am going to talk to you about grown-up things. Are you ready to talk about grown-up things?”  
  
“Yes!” She chirps, face flushed with anticipation. “Emi is all grown up!”  
  
“People can only marry their most important person,” Hide says as seriously and solemnly as he possibly can. “That is why papa married mama, because papa’s most important person is mama. So you can only marry your important person, Emi. I’m too old to be your most important person.”  
  
She puffs up in indignation, “Hi-chan is Emi’s most important person!”   
  
“More important than your mama and papa and Asahi?”  
  
She hesitates. Hide drops a kiss on her forehead. “You’re such a good girl, Emi. One day, you’re going to meet someone who is so much smarter, cooler, and more handsome than me and they will be your most important person and you will be theirs. And when you get married, I will be there with your papa and mama and Asahi and we will all be so happy for you and it will be a day you never forget.”  
  
Emi considers this long and hard. “You promise?”  
  
“I promise,” he swears, extending out his pinky.  
  
They link pinkies and she giggles happily for a moment before suddenly going quiet. “What about your most important person, Hi-chan?”  
  
Hide twirls her pigtails around his index fingers, smiling as she wriggles happily in his lap.  
  
“I’m not my most important person’s most important person,” he says gently.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Kaneki and Touka go temporarily insane one April day when Emi is seven and Asahi is four and decide that as adults with lives utterly decimated by the responsibility of child rearing, everyone deserves a break and volunteer themselves as sacrifices for a day at the zoo. Nishiki is so moved that he gives Kaneki a pat on the shoulder, misty-eyed at the prospect of alcohol and the company of peers.     
  
Yoriko, Kimi, and Hinami disappear into the department stores and are never seen again as Hide, Nishiki, and Ayato huddle in a bar a couple streets over from the stores.  Ayato downs a shot for Yoriko’s husband, the poor soul who has overtime on a  _Sunday._    
  
Nishiki is slurring after his seventh glass of clotted blood and Ayato, who can drink camels under the table, is unphased, while Hide is nursing his second beer and already feeling muzzy.   
  
“ _You_ ,” Nishiki says, pointing at Hide. Hide goes crosseyed. “ _You_. You are pazzetic.”  
  
“’M not,” he asserts to Nishiki’s finger. “I’m not pazzetic. Pascetic?”  
  
“Stop pining over that loser and move on.” Nishiki finishes the last of his glass, tongue tangling over words as he continues. “Ten years ‘s too long.”  
  
_Not ten years_ , Hide thinks,  _a lifetime._  
  
Ayato stills. Hide recognizes that face; it’s the constipated ‘I need my wife, I’m not equipped to handle emotions’ face and Hide frowns. “You’re making Ayato upset.”  
  
“Oh god, Nagachika, no. Don’t drag me into this.”  
  
“ _You_ ,” Nishiki bellows, finger swerving to point at Ayato. “You en _…enable him_.”  
  
“How dry a household does Kimi keep?” Ayato mutters after Nishiki has collapsed onto the table.  
  
“Mrgh,” Nishiki replies plaintively.  
  
“I’m not dragging your drunk ass back home.”  
  
Hide is starting on his third glass of beer and just shy of falling asleep and he doesn’t mean to, but the words tumble out before he can stop them. “Am I relying on you and Hinami-chan too much? Ayato-kun?”  
  
“Shut up, you drunk.” Hide distantly hears Ayato calling Kimi on his cellphone and his curt demand she pick up her passed out husband before hearing Ayato say, “You’re staying over tonight. Hina’s orders.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Asahi was always mature for his age.   
  
That is why, Hide thinks, it is inevitable that he should fall in love at the same time as his sister.  
  
His sister’s love is dramatic and tragic –the boy is a third year in her high school. He is in the kendo club, an average student, has the loveliest chestnut hair, and the cutest smile  _ever_. She’s a first year and in the calligraphy club because her best friend is in it and there’s nothing outstanding about her at all. She’s doomed to a one-sided love, she sniffs. He will never notice her.   
  
In comparison, Asahi’s love lacks the intensity and ache of Emi’s. The girl he falls in love with is quiet and bookish, with long, dark hair and thick, fluttering lashes. She likes jazz and is experimenting with American ‘soulful R &B’ and she is thoughtful and deep and Asahi is so utterly and completely smitten. He has no idea how to approach her.  
  
Both Kaneki children sit on his couch, looking miserable and hopeful, waiting for him to say the magic words that will fix their lovelorn situation.  
  
What he tells them is: “Nothing will ever bloom from your silence.”  
  
Emi makes a face. “That sounds like something from one of papa’s books.”  
  
“Your papa is a very wise man,” Hide says with a straight face. “He also has very wise books.”  
  
“What about you?” Asahi asks very quietly. He has Kaneki’s eyes, Hide thinks. “Have you ever said anything to the person you love?”  
  
“No, I haven’t,” Hide replies, smiling softly. “So you should learn from this lonely, old man’s mistakes. And if you are rejected, I'll take you guys out next Sunday, okay? A day out for the lonely hearts.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Asahi graduates from high school and starts Kyoto University for medicine, leaving behind two proud parents and an equally proud sister and uncle.   
  
“I’m old,” Kaneki says one night out with Hide. “My kids have finished high school, my eldest daughter will graduate college soon.” He looks horrified into his cup as the realization dawns. “She’ll marry and move away, just like my son has. And then it’ll just be me and Touka in Tokyo.”  
  
“Ouch, that hurts. What are the rest of us, chopped liver?” Hide backtracks. “Chopped toenails. Mushy bladder?”  
  
“Hide, your attempts to be politically correct hurt.”  
  
“My point is, I’ll always be here for you. And it’s an affront to your beautiful wife to be so down when you’re still going to live the rest of your life with her.”  
  
“My kids are leaving meeee…”  
  
_No matter how far everyone else may fly from you, I will always be here_ , Hide does not say.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Just like Hide promised, Emi marries a wonderful man and he loves her as much as she loves him . The wedding is beautiful and an event to remember.   
  
Her dark hair is pulled into an elegant bun, delicate curls framing her face, and she looks so much like her mother Kaneki breaks into tears walking her down the aisle. She throws her bouquet at Hide, who catches it clumsily and with confusion, mouths,  _‘I’m too old for this!’_  before everyone shuffles out of the church and towards the reception hall.  
  
Hide sits with Ayato and Hinami and other close family and friends a table away from the bride and groom, happily chatting with Ayato, when Emi marches up to him, the train of her dress clutched in her hand as she demands a dance.  
  
She is so big now, he realizes as he takes lead. He remembers slow dancing with her standing on his feet at Ayato and Hinami’s ceremony when she was five. “You’re all grown up now. What happened to marrying me?” he teases, blinking back tears. “This geezer too old for you now?”  
  
“I can’t. You can only marry your most important person, after all.” He twirls her and remembers doing the same thing for her mother all those years ago at Kaneki’s wedding. “And I’m not your most important person either.”  
  
“No,” he agrees. “But you’re so very important to me. If he ever makes you cry, just call me. I’ll come running.”  
  
“I know. You and papa and Asahi all will. But it won’t happen, he loves me and he makes me really happy.”   
  
The song ends and Hide leans down for a hug when she whispers, “You should tell papa, Hi-chan.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
He wakes with his face smooshed into Kaneki’s collarbone, Kaneki’s drool in his hair, Kaneki’s leg thrown over his hip, his own arm thrown over Kaneki’s waist, and the feeling of peace that spreads from chest to fingertips to toes. Like always, he drops a kiss on Kaneki’s forehead, takes in the other man’s rumpled appearance, the track of drool down his chin, feels his heart clench with yearning.   
  
As always, he lumbers into the kitchen without brushing his teeth or washing his face, and practices the fine art of cooking with fire with his eyes glued sleep-shut until Kaneki zombie-shuffles out of their room and into the bathroom. He accepts the kiss on the cheek and trades for it with a piping hot mug of Kaneki’s favorite coffee and brown sugar cubes. He sits down at their table with a plate of Kaneki’s special bacon that Hide most definitely does not question and a plate of eggs and toast and everything is perfect and as it should be as Kaneki reads the newspaper with his crooked tie and sleep-muzzy drawl.  
  
Hide fixes Kaneki’s tie before he leaves, like normal, and kisses him goodbye before wandering into the shower to get ready for work and everything is just as it should be.  
  
The dream is so much clearer than Hide remembers. The tears on his pillow are just as wet as they always were.   
  
  
\--  
  
  
Asahi marries his middle school sweetheart two years after Emi marries her college beau.  
  
Hide is fifty-six and too old to be chasing after hyperactive toddlers and his back too rickety to pick up squirmy children so he retires. With the money he made from some smart investments when he was in his twenties, hazard back-pay for when he was working for the CCG, and his retirement, he can buy a small shop in Shizuoka with an apartment above it and have enough money left over for renovations.   
  
He takes the train down to Shizuoka and walks up and down its shores, feels tranquility and serenity in the ebb and flow of the blue, blue sea.  
  
This is where he needs to be.  
  
So he buys it.  
  
He buys a little shop by the seafront and makes the necessary calls to schedule the renovations and calls his landlord and gives a month’s notice and slowly packs the things he needs and donates what he doesn’t. He tells his friends that he’s moving, that if they are ever in the Shizuoka area, they should stop by. He puts off telling Kaneki, because it feels like running away and not running towards something when he prepares his speech for the other man.   
  
“You need to tell him,” Hinami says, voice soft and far away on the phone. “The longer you wait the more hurt he’ll be.”  
  
“I know,” he says because he is a coward and has always been one in regards to all things Kaneki Ken. “I will, soon.”  
  
“Soon,” she repeats.   
  
“Soon.”  
  
He waits another two days after the call to show up on Kaneki’s doorstep with an invitation to go out drinking. Touka’s eyes are especially soft that day, and Hide knows that Touka knows, and he can only smile in apology. “I’ll bring him back soon,” he promises.  
  
“Take your time,” she says.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Kaneki doesn’t say anything when Hide tells him, just drinks another shot of aged blood, and another.  
  
He makes his way back home leaning heavily on Hide in silence.  
  
“Why are you leaving me,” Kaneki breathes drunkenly into Hide’s neck.   
  
_‘Because I need to,’_  isn’t an acceptable answer so Hide says, “Because I think there is something I need to find there.”  
  
“Don’t go,” Kaneki slurs sadly, “Don’t leave like Emi and Asahi, Hide. Don’t go away like mother…”  
  
“I’m always here for you, Kaneki. If you ever need me, I’ll fly up to Tokyo in a heartbeat. I’m not abandoning you, I’ve got your back forever.”  
  
“You’re leaving me,” he repeats forlornly.   
  
They make it to Kaneki’s building and, with much effort, manage to navigate Kaneki up the stairs and into his wife’s loving arms.   
  
“I could never leave you,” Hide admits to the night sky once he is alone. “Which is why I have to.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
The café gets regulars.  
  
Every morning, he wakes up at four am and putters around the café’s kitchen, grinding coffee beans he selected the night before, punching bread dough into submission and proofing them in preparation for the shop’s opening. He chops the vegetables and meat needed for the admittedly few dishes on his menu and cubes fruit for the desserts and drinks. At seven am, he opens the shop for fresh coffee and bread and finishes up any last minute prep and waits for sleepy regulars to wander in.   
  
He spends the rest of the day making coffee, drinks, and entrees at a sedate pace as he talks with his regulars for hours on end. He sneaks little treats to the small children who come, ghoul and human alike, and takes up slow jogging after the shop closes at four in the afternoon because the pudge in his middle is bordering unseemly.   
  
That is the favorite part of his day, jogging along the length of the Shizuoka beach as the sun sets, a gleaming red jewel above the golden sea.  
  
With beauty like that, anyone can forget.   
  
  
\--  
  
  
Hide has had terrible pain in his abdomen for a week before one of his regulars manages to manhandle him into the back of  his car and drive Hide to the hospital. He spends the ride insisting it’s nothing; it’s probably indigestion, the plague of old men everywhere.   
  
It turns out it isn’t nothing. It’s pancreatic cancer.   
  
“You have two to three months left, Nagachika-san,” the oncologist tells him. “If you have any loved ones, I suggest you contact them,” she says kindly.  
  
“I will, thank you.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Emi cries on the phone when he tells her and he has to convince her not take extended leave from work to fly to Shizuoka to take care of him. She is a mother with two kids; she has more important people to care for. She spends the next twenty minutes alternating between yelling at him and sobbing until her husband drags her away and calmly tells Hide they will be taking a flight up to Shizuoka in two weeks.   
  
Asahi has apparently managed to coordinate flight times with Emi during the time it took for Hide to dial the phone and reports to him that he will be arriving in three weeks after Emi has to return home. He then proceeds to recommend an oncologist in the Shizuoka area, suggest supplements, and finally rest. “You should probably consider closing the café,” he says slowly. “Maintaining it requires too much work and you should be resting.”  
  
Hide agrees to consider it as he mentally makes plans to alter the menu so he can continue working for another month, at least.  
  
Hinami’s voice shakes a lot when she picks up and all Ayato says is that they will be down in a week to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid like try to run the café while he’s still sick.   
  
When he finally calls the Kaneki residence, Touka is the only one that speaks.  
  
Somehow, Hide had hoped he would hear Kaneki’s voice.   
  
“We’ll be flying down in a month, Hide. After everyone else,” she says. “We’ll be staying until you get better. We’re making arrangements as we speak.”   
  
“Thank you, Touka-chan.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
He goes into work two days later and writes the new menu on the blackboard outside the café and hangs a sign about the new changes. He chats with his regulars as he brews coffee and serves toast and simple pasta dishes and it’s like nothing has changed.  
  
Outside his little piece of the world, the sea sparkles like stars.  
  
Like always.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
This time, he wakes up to an empty bed, just a mess of blankets and pillows where Kaneki would be.  
  
The sun is setting outside the window, dark and red, and he cries into white sheets, heart heavy.  
  
“Why are you crying, Hide?” Kaneki asks from the doorway, cooking chopsticks in hand. “Did you have a bad dream?”  
  
“I thought I was,” he croaks.  
  
“You were just dreaming,” Kaneki says soothingly, hand running through his hair.  
  
“Yeah, I am. I’m just dreaming.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Hide wakes up in a white, white room, as hospital rooms tend to be.  
  
“Good morning,” Touka says as she makes bunny shaped slices of apple. “Or afternoon. It’s around two.”  
  
“Mornin’,” he rasps, throat dry. “Got any water on hand?”  
  
“Of course.”   
  
She helps raise the hospital bed and places a cushion behind his back. “Do you think you can eat? The doctor said you should eat if you could.”  
  
“Apple bunnies.”  
  
“I used to wish I could have them in my lunchbox too, as a child,” Touka admits. “And as a mother I wished I could have made them for my children.”  
  
“I’m a bit old to be your kid.”  
  
“I’d never have an old geezer like you as a son, Hideyoshi,” she sniffs. “Especially one stupid enough to work until he collapsed.”  
  
“It’s comforting, having a routine.”  
  
She doesn’t say she understands and Hide loves that about her.   
  
He eats the apples she peels and they while away time with small talk while Hide watches the sun set over the golden sea.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she says when magenta has finally overtaken the sky. “He doesn’t know how to deal with… this. You being sick.”  _Ken doesn’t know how to deal with you dying,_ she tactfully does not say. “I asked him to get some more fruit so he could have some time to process…”  
  
“It’s okay, Touka, it’s okay. It’s my fault anyway," he admits, lips twisted in a facsimile of a grin, "I lied and now I'm abandoning him.”  
  
“You’re being stupid. You’re both idiots.”  
  
Hide can’t contain the hysterical laughter that bubbles from him, the sudden well of tears that spring from depths he never knew he had. “I know.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” she says again, grasping his hand in hers. “I’m sorry. I always knew.”  
  
“I know. I’ve always known you knew.” He squeezes her hand, looks for strength to face the truth. “I’ve known ever since you let me name your children. Your treasures. You didn’t have to, you know. You never had anything to apologize for, but… it was like a chance. A chance to share something with Kaneki even…”  
  
“I understand.” She smiles wetly at him and he feels a rush of relief.   
  
He is left exhausted, a hollow emptiness under his ribs where he once felt the weight of his secrets and wishes, and he has never felt better.  
  
“I’m feeling drained, I think I might…” He breaks out in a yawn and Touka busies herself with lowering his bed and reorganizing his pillows.  
  
“Is there anything you want me to tell Ken when he gets back?” she asks gently before he drifts off.  
  
“No… there’s nothing… If it wasn’t worth mentioning before it isn’t worth mentioning now.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Morning arrives and they are in bed, like they always are, tangled in each other, warm and comfortable.  
  
When he moves to get up, Kaneki muzzily grumbles, “Where are you going? I’m cold.”  
  
_‘Breakfast,’_  is just on the tip of his tongue when he instead says, “I don’t know,” and settles back in bed and curls around the other man.   
  
“I’m not going anywhere.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day~


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [Hellfire000](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Hellfire000/pseuds/Hellfire000), who asked for the Touka and Kaneki side of these events. 
> 
> Hopefully the Kaneki side will be up soon. 8)

She doesn’t quite have the words to describe it. The knowing.  
  
It’s a bit like closing your eyes, she thinks. Like the little floating crinkle-lines she sees when she actually waits for them. They never register otherwise, ghosts in her vision, only visible when she puts forth the effort.  
  
Nagachika Hideyoshi, childhood friend, best friend, closest friend, dearest friend, of her boyfriend Kaneki Ken, is in love with him. It’s in the way the man’s smile always lingers, faint but constant, wherever Kaneki is. It’s the gentle, unfaltering support, the way amber eyes soften whenever they rest on Kaneki. It’s the way the human looks at the ghoul; as if he was the moon and stars, and the world began and ended with him, the axis of Hide’s universe.  
  
She hates him, more than a little, an irrational, immature surge of anger that courses through her when she actually takes the time to see --to see Hide and how utterly and completely in love he is. In love with the man she loves.   
  
Because he loves Kaneki more than she does, she thinks. Has loved him longer, has loved him more desperately and achingly. She sees it now, in the quiet touches, the light laughter. She sees it all; how completely outclassed she is in the face of this love, unconditional and eternal.   
  
But she waited for Kaneki --she waited for him for years, believed in him when everyone thought he died, when he had joined the enemy, when he was lost and had abandoned them all.  
  
She waited, she believed.  
  
She deserves this. She deserves the happiness she has now, she suffered for it. She fought for it. She’s tired of everything she loves turning to ash in her hands. She finally has everything; family, friends, love. The fight is over and they won and now…  
  
Now she gets to enjoy the fruit that victory has borne.  
  
And she hates that, as much as she tries to tell herself she deserves everything she has, she knows.  
  
Just as much as she deserves this happiness, so does Nagachika Hideyoshi.  
  
  
  
  
But what she hates the most is the way Nagachika smiles at her.   
  
The way he comforts Kaneki after their fights. How, the next morning, no matter how explosive and wrathful the fight was, Kaneki apologizes. No matter how stubborn and unreasonable either of them was, no matter how unfair she may have been, or how evasive he may have been, Kaneki-the-day-after looks her in the eye and tells her he loves her. He loves her and he wants to work through their problems, is willing to do whatever it takes to make this work --if she is, too.  
  
And she always smiles, even as frustration builds.  
  
Nagachika is the reason why Kaneki is here.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
What she hates the most is that her relationship is buoyed by Nagachika’s continued sacrifice, a testament of his love.   
  
  
\--

 

  
  
“I think Nagachika is in love with Kaneki,” she confesses into the cushion of her brother’s couch, resentment caught on the jagged edges of her guilt.   
  
“Oh, so you do have eyes,” Ayato grunts as he plays a video game --another reminder of Nagachika and his influence. While she and her brother had been separated, estranged and at odds with one another, the human had managed to bridge a gap she is still trying to close. Nagachika has earned Ayato’s trust, respect, friendship, and affection. It shows in his new hobbies, his recent fascination with video games. “Congratulations --you win the award for being the last person to find out.”  
  
“That’s not true,” she grouses, angrily tossing the couch cushion at his stupid head.   
  
“Kaneki, Sasaki, or whatever name he’s going by now, doesn’t count. When it comes to selective obliviousness, the guy’s the grand champion.” Ayato’s character is on a beach. Hiding in a cardboard box. “Exactly how many times did you have to ask that airhead out, dearest sister?”  
  
“That’s not the same. Anyone would be gunshy after Rize,” is what she says, even when she feels foolish for saying so. She knows the numerous failed attempts had left her unsure, confused. She remembers sitting in her room and telling herself  _tomorrow is the last time_. “And he goes by Kaneki now and you know it.”  
  
Ayato has, after managing to suplex another man into the warm sand, grapple the blond to the ground, manhandle the guy into a choke hold, and finally lure the man into the cardboard box, has apparently cleared the quest with flying colors. Touka isn’t quite sure what to think of this game Nagachika had recommended to her brother.   
  
“There’s gunshy,” he says as he quickly tabs through screens, “and then there’s responding to an evening at the finest restaurant in the area with the words, ‘Oh, who else is coming?’ When the guy’s convinced of something, he’s  _convinced_.”  
  
“What does that mean.”  
  
“It means that Nagachika spent a good month and a half gently coaxing Kaneki into pulling his head outta his ass.” Ayato clicks his tongue in irritation --apparently he failed to successfully sneak by. She doesn’t see why he’s so annoyed, anyone would be suspicious of a cardboard box in the middle of a hallway in a super-secret villain base. She would’ve laughed herself silly at any Aogiri member who tried to break into the CCG armed with a cardboard box as camouflage. “It’s astonishing how much negativity is stored in one tiny body. The guy is convinced nothing good could ever happen to him.”  
  
She tosses another cushion at him and he ducks, that bastard. “People in glass houses,” she warns.  
  
“I’ll have you know Hina and I managed to do just fine without Nagachika’s babysitting, thank you.”  
  
“So we’re just going to ignore this whole… leather grunge phase.”  
  
“Shut up.”

 

  
  
\--

 

  
Hinami isn’t at the apartment she shares with Ayato and her brother just shrugs and says, “She had things to take care of.”  
  
Touka dials Hinami’s cell phone, worried. Did they have a fight? “Hinami? Are you okay?” she asks when Hinami picks up on the fourth ring. “You aren’t at your apartment. Did you have a fight with Ayato?”  
  
“Mmmm, nee-chan?” There’s rustling of cloth --bedsheets? --and a decidedly masculine mumble on the other end. “Everything’s fine. We didn’t have a fight.”  
  
She tries to breathe, to count her breaths --because, surely, Hinami isn’t cheating on her brother. Hinami wouldn’t do that. Hinami wouldn’t break Ayato’s heart. But it’s barely 8 am and Hinami isn’t at her apartment and what is she doing with another man, so early in the morning? “Kaneki’s birthday is coming up and I was hoping you could help me pick out a present.”  
  
“Oh,” Hinami says and there is more rustling. Touka can hear her voice, just faintly, as she addresses the mystery man. “Hide, wake up. Hide.” Touka tries to contain her rising anger. “I have to go out,” she says, gently and kindly. “Will you be okay today?” There’s mumbled confirmation before Hinami returns to the phone, voice clear and light, “I can meet you by the cafe in twenty minutes?”  
  
Distantly, Touka hears Hinami reassure Hide, “Don’t worry, I brought a change of clothes. Mind if I borrow your hairbrush?”  
  
“Alright,” she mutters before turning back to Ayato’s closed apartment door.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“It’s nothing,” Ayato says later that night when she stays over for some dinner and coffee. It’s dinner and coffee, not an interrogation, she insists, even as she pressures Ayato and Hinami into spilling all. “Sometimes, Hina stays over at Nagachika’s apartment.”  
  
Touka sips her coffee and waits.  
  
Hinami stares into her mug, light frown marring her features. “We don’t mean to be secretive, it’s just… We don’t think Hide would like us talking about it.” She looks up, earnest gaze settling on Touka. “Nothing untoward is happening, really.”  
  
“Look, sometimes even I go over, okay?” Ayato scratches his head. “Don’t worry Hina, I’ll explain things to Nagachika later.” Hinami looks as if she’ll protest but she quiets, restless fingers dancing across the plane of her cup. “Sometimes Nagachika has bad days, and he needs some company. Nothing really calms him quite as well as…”  
  
“We hold him,” is Hinami’s helpful input. “It also helps if we run our fingers through his hair.”  
  
Ayato rubs his face with his hands, a strangled, frustrated groan coming from his lips. “I was trying  _not_  to make Nagachika sound like an abandoned puppy, Hina.”  
  
“You…cuddle,” Touka reiterates, unsure. “You periodically go over to Nagachika’s apartment for a cuddle.”  
  
“Well, no.” Ayato can’t raise his head, clearly despairing that they are having this conversation at all. “I wouldn’t say periodically.”  
  
Laughter bubbles up, pure and unbidden.   
  
Cuddling, of all the things.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
She tries not to think of the reasons why Nagachika would need comforting.

 

  
  
\--

 

  
It surprises her when Kaneki proposes.  
  
Kaneki looks more surprised than she is when he does.  
  
He lowers himself to the floor after they pay their respects, Touka half-turned, ready to leave.   
  
“With your permission,” he says, back straight, hands in his lap, “I would like to marry your daughter. I love her very dearly and…” He hesitates. “Regardless of what you say, if she would have me, I intend to marry her. But I think it would make her very happy to have your blessing.”  
  
He says this to the Kirishima family gravestone, to the memorial of the mother she doesn’t remember and the father she had just said goodbye to a year ago. He says this, on his knees, bowed after finishing his request.  
  
He is red to the tip of his ears, hands shaking on the cool stone ground.  
  
_I love him_ , she thinks.  _I love him._  
  
“Of course they give their blessing, you idiot,” she says, smiling against the tears. “I do, too.”  
  
“Oh good,” he says, laughing weakly. “I was wondering what I would do if my bride-to-be rejected me in front of her parents.”  
  
She laughs too when she kisses him, and, just for a moment, she forgets that her happiness flourishes on the corpse of another’s.

 

  
  
\--

 

  
“Is he okay with this?”   
  
“I think he is,” Ayato says. “Of course he is. And even if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t say anything. There’s nothing he wants more than Kaneki’s happiness.”  
  
“It’s not fair,” she whispers, curled around a pillow, phone clutched in her hands. It’s misplaced pity, she knows, wallowing in guilt like this, the greatest offense to Nagachika and his feelings, his intentions.  
  
“When was life ever fair.” Ayato snipes. “That was the first lesson we learned.”  
  
It’s the first lesson all ghoul children learn.  
  
“But it should be,” she insists wetly.  
  
“Ever the idealist,” he deadpans. “Go to bed, Touka. No matter how you feel, this has always been the path you chose. Both of you made your decisions long ago.”

 

  
  
\--

 

  
She sits before a mirror on her wedding day, anxiety rising in her chest.  
  
“Can I do this?” she asks.  
  
Hinami carefully twists Touka’s dark hair into a bun, deft fingers carefully inserting delicate butterfly pins alongside neat braids. “Of course you can,” she says as she crowns Touka with her wedding veil. “You wouldn’t have said yes if you couldn’t.”  
  
And it’s true.  
  
She tries to blink back tears.  
  
Kirishima Touka is selfish enough to grasp onto her happiness with both hands and never let go.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“I wish you both all the happiness in the world,” he says, smile wide and true, and her heart aches with the sincerity in his words, his eyes. _I wish you all the happiness in the world, my love, my love's love. I wish for you everything. Everything you can ever want, everything you could ever dream of._  And he wipes away her tears, gentle as a butterfly’s kiss, as she struggles to convey her gratitude. “It’s your wedding day; save your tears for after your first fight!” he laughs, brilliant and blinding.  
  
She smacks his shoulder, a giggle escaping as he proceeds to twirl her, the train of her gown fanning.  
  
This ridiculous, beautiful, amazing man.  
  
_We don’t deserve you_ , she thinks, tears still falling. _Not at all._

 

  
  
\--

 

  
  
It’s a bit like having two husbands.  
  
Two husbands and an overbearing brother.  
  
It’s amazing how the men in her life swarm around her the minute they learn she is with child.  
  
“I can sit by myself, you realize,” she says archly, eyebrow raised. “I’m two months along, not bursting at the seams.”  
  
It doesn’t stop Kaneki from fluffing the cushions and carefully placing them behind her back every time she moves for a seat. Nagachika continues to visit with armfuls of books on pregnancy, which Kaneki consumes at a feverish pace. Ayato swoops around the apartment like an overgrown bat, arms always filled with supplies that Hinami has helpfully provided.  
  
“Why aren’t there more books on ghoul pregnancies?” Nagachika asks. “Can you take vitamins? Do you need prenatal vitamins?”  
  
“Maybe we should consider more balanced meals,” Kaneki murmurs. “Touka, you’ll have to start eating the liver and stop dumping it on me.”  
  
“I’m going to kill them all,” Touka says brightly to the only sane soul in her apartment. “No one will find a trace of them ever again.”  
  
Hinami hums in reply, cheerfully brewing coffee.

 

  
  
\--

 

  
It’s a peace offering, really.  
  
A peace offering for herself, between the her that hated Nagachika for loving Kaneki too and the her that loves Hide, dearest friend anyone could ask for.  
  
Because Hide looks at the baby like he’s falling in love, and he is, she knows. She knows he loves her baby, Kaneki’s baby, as dearly as if she were his own, that already, he would do anything for that tiny bundle in his arms. Everything.  
  
And it’s proof she’s right when he nearly stumbles over the words, when his eyelashes flutter like startled butterflies, trying to stem the tears. “I’ve always liked the name Emi,” he says, voice thick with emotion. Gratitude.   
  
She loves him, she realizes. She loves Nagachika Hideyoshi. Not the way she loves Kaneki, or even the way she loves Ayato and Hinami. But she loves him, deeply and truly, this beautiful soul that loves so wholly and eternally, unwavering.   
  
He’s family, in every sense of the word.   
  
And, as she watches him coo over her daughter, the newly christened Emi, this is the greatest truth in her life.  
  
_Emi_ , she thinks when her baby girl is back in her arms. _Emi.  
_  
_A blessing._  


 

\--  


 

Hide quits his job at the CCG and cheerfully returns to studying.  
  
He says it’s because he can’t stand being a paper pusher for one more second. He needs a job that suits him --something that allows him to move around. He’s not made for sitting around, handcuffed to a desk. He’s the active sort.   
  
Preschool teacher is the kind of job that suits him.  
  
Besides, kids love him.  
  
And Touka indulges him, smiles as he comes over every day, ostensibly to give her time to rest and recuperate from labor, instead of studying like he claims he should be doing (and is doing, he says). She continues to indulge him when she returns to work, her passion, when he continues to come over to their apartment and babysits Emi, who is truly the most spoiled baby to ever exist, who has a grown man curled so tightly around her little finger as surely as the man is at Kaneki’s whimsy.  
  
“Oh, you sweet child,” she hears one evening after she opens her front door. “You are the greatest joy in your mama and papa’s life, you know. Never make them cry, they love you so much.”  
  
Emi gurgles in Hide’s arms, tiny hand booping his nose as he smiles down at her, soft and completely besotted.  
  
_Oh, you heartbreaker_ , Touka laughs, because she can already see the future. She sees tiny fists clinging to Hide’s sleeves, Hide embarrassed and Kaneki’s pride wounded, as the ghoul fails to appeal to his daughter.  _Emi is definitely going to make Kaneki cry._  


 

\--

 

  
“You’re both so weird,” Hide says when Touka is heavily pregnant with their second child. “Why do you still call him Kaneki? Why do you _let her_?” She freezes, her husband’s hand on her belly, her unborn child also stilling, kicks abating. “You’ve been married for  _years_  and you’re about to have your second child.”  
  
She can’t even look up, her face is a furnace, and Emi happily gurgles from Hide’s arms, “Red! Red!”  
  
  
  
Later that night, over dinner, when Hide has gone home and Emi has finally stopped throwing the mashed intestines at the ceiling, wall, floor, and Kaneki’s eye, Touka asks, “How was your day, Ken?” She manages to keep her tone light, her words steady.  
  
“G-goood?” her husband manages, words wobbly, ears crimson.

 

  
  
\--

 

  
Emi is seven, and too bright for her age, when she tugs at Touka’s sleeves while they are at the zoo, Ken juggling the attention of the three other children.   
  
“Is papa Hi-chan’s most important person?” she asks, eyes wide and questioning.   
  
And she doesn’t know what it means, truly, she is sure. She thinks this is something Hide must have told the children, for what reason, she doesn’t know, but she understands. “Yes,” she says, lowering herself down until her eyes are level with her daughter’s. “Hi-chan’s important person is papa. But this is a secret, okay?” She puts her finger to her lips, smiles when her daughter does the same, head nodding earnestly.  
  
“Why?” Emi asks, because she is at that age.  
  
“Because it’s what Hi-chan wants,” she says, fingers combing through her daughter’s fine, dark hair. “And we should always honor the wishes of the people we love, right?”  
  
Emi, who is seven, and entirely too bright for her age, puffs her cheeks up in indignation. “Maybe,” she says, clearly unconvinced.

 

  
  
\--

 

  
Asahi graduates and moves far away.  
  
It breaks her heart to see her baby boy leave, to go so very far away from where she is. She tries to send him off without tears, because that is what he deserves, to leave unburdened and free. But she does cry when he hugs her before he leaves and he has to bend his knees to do so properly; her boy is so big. He’s an adult.  
  
The tears fall freely when he asks her, softly so no one can hear, “Please take care of Hi-chan, mama.” A request for no one but her.  
  
_You know he doesn’t feel comfortable going to auntie and uncle_ , are his unspoken words. _He doesn’t want to intrude on their family life. You’re the only one who can._  
  
Her son is all grown up, an adult, and leaving for a place so very far away from her.  
  
He has grown up so well, with a heart so kind, and she knows it is because of Hide that her children have grown up so. Because as much as she and Ken have loved their children, Hide has loved them just as much. There are no children that were as loved or as cared for as her children.  
  
“Take care of papa too. He needs you,” are Asahi’s last words before they part.

 

  
  
\--

 

  
  
Hide dances with Emi on her wedding day, and Touka is reminded of hers and the words the blond had said.  
  
_I wish you both all the happiness in the world._  
  
Her heart clenches and she asks, “Why hasn’t he moved on?” Because she wishes that for him, too. She wishes for Hide to have happiness, he deserves nothing less.  
  
“Because he doesn’t want to,” Hinami says, smile small and so very sad. “Or maybe because he can’t. It doesn’t matter, either way.”  
  
Touka watches her daughter whisper something in Hide’s ear, watches the man’s face crumple, tears springing forth, even as he tries to smile. It’s the most painful scene she has ever seen.  
  
“He deserves more,” she says, heart too full, too raw at the edges and too tender inside. “He deserves…”  
  
“Smile,” Hinami says gently. “It’s your daughter’s wedding.”  
  
Touka cries at her daughter’s reception and her husband comforts her, warm hand stroking her back. “It’s okay,” he tells her. “Emi isn’t going away.”

 

  
  
\--

 

  
  
She hears about Hide moving from Hinami, a courtesy so she can steel herself. Because when Ken learns Hide is leaving, she will have no time to mourn. She will have to be her husband’s strength, the pillar he leans on as the closest, dearest person in his life walks away, for the first time.  
  
She greets the blond at the doorway when he comes, apology clear in his eyes. And she aches. She too is saying goodbye to a constant in her life, a presence that she was convinced would never leave.  
  
Nagachika Hideyoshi would be by their side until the day they died.  
  
“Take your time,” she tells him, because she too needs time to compose herself.  
  
_This isn’t goodbye_ , she repeats to herself.  _This isn’t goodbye._  
  
But it feels like goodbye. Deep in her bones, it feels like goodbye.

 

  
\--

 

  
_Don’t cry_ , Touka tells herself as she grips the phone so hard she’s sure it’ll break, shatter in her hands. _Don’t cry. You need to be strong._  
  
She needs to be strong, for Hide.   
  
Because he must be terrified, more than any of them.

He’s dying.

But her heart beats to _he’s leaving us, he’s leaving us, he’s leaving us_  as her husband’s heart beats _he’s leaving me, he’s leaving me, he’s leaving me_.  
  
“Don’t cry, Touka-chan,” that familiar, warm voice entreats. “Everything will be fine. I’m fine.”  
  
“Don’t be stupid,” she says wetly. “Why would I cry.”  
  
Hide laughter sparkles, like it always does, on the other end of the line. “Of course, silly me. I know the others didn’t listen to me at all, so tell them not to worry so much for me, will you? I’m fine.”  
  
“You tell them,” she insists.   
  
When she hangs up the phone, she turns to her husband, takes in his disheveled clothes, his rumpled hair, his red eyes. She musters all her strength and smiles, “He’s fine. He wanted me to tell you he’s fine.” She twines herself around Ken, hands stroking, as his tears wet her clothes and hers wet his. “Hide’s strong, he’ll be fine,” she continues, searching for comfort in her empty words. Absolution in despair.  
  
Ken doesn’t say anything, just holds her tighter, voiceless.

 

  
\--

 

  
“I’m sorry,” she admits, her greatest secret revealed. “I’m sorry. I always knew.”  
  
Her heart breaks, fully and completely, when he says, “I know. I’ve always known you knew.” The pieces crumble even more thoroughly when those hands, so weak with illness, squeeze her own, to comfort  _her_. “I’ve known ever since you let me name your children. Your treasures. You didn’t have to, you know. You never had anything to apologize for, but… it was like a chance. A chance to share something with Kaneki, even…”  
  
She tells him she understands, because that is what he needs to hear. And she does, to an extent. But she has always had things to apologize for --the anger she held against him when her relationship with Ken had just been budding, immature and entirely unfair. The feelings of resentment that lingered, hot in her chest, whenever she thought of Ken and how Hide would always own a part of him that she would never know.  
  
These are words she can never say, so she tamps them down. She smiles sweetly at the man who deserves so much more than what life has given him, what she has given him, and busies herself with making him comfortable as he drifts off to sleep.  
  
“Is there anything you want me to tell Ken when he gets back?” she asks, the closest to penance she can offer.  
  
“No…there’s nothing… If it wasn’t worth mentioning before, it isn’t worth mentioning now.”  
  
_But it is_ , she yearns to tell him as she brushes sweaty bangs away from his forehead. _It is. It is worth mentioning. It always was._

 

  
  
\--

 

  
  
She stands before a grave, clean and well-maintained, flowers in her hands.  
  
“It’s been a year,” she tells the stone marker. “It’s been a year and Ken still can’t bring himself to come.”  
  
Carefully, she lays down the flowers. She lets the tears stain her cheeks, because she is so angry and spiteful, even as she mourns. _Let him know_ , she thinks.  _Let him._  
  
“It matters,” she bites out angrily. “It matters, it always did.  _You_  matter, and Ken deserved to know.  _He deserves to know_. And from no one else but you.” She doesn’t know what to do with this misplaced rage, thinks she will be mourning their loss even when she dies. “You left us,” she says, selfishly.  
  
“You left us, Hideyoshi.” She bites her lip, she had promised herself she would reign her emotions in. “And it’s vindictive and unfair, but we can’t forgive you for leaving us.  _I_  can’t. How could you leave without ever saying a word?”  She lays a hand on the cool stone, wrangling her emotions under control, “But I guess that that’s what the living have to learn to live with, isn’t? Learn to live with everything the dead left behind, including the words left unspoken.  
  
“Nagachika Hideyoshi, you are the most monumentally selfish person ever, and I hate you.”  
  
Brushing off her hands, she takes a step back. She wipes away her tears, carefully paints a smile on her face, even as she’s sure it is twisted by grief. “Ken still waits for you, you know. We’re not saying goodbye because you never did, you big fool.”  
  
  
_We love you, Nagachika Hideyoshi. We miss you.  
  
  
  
  
  
_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting on the same day as tumbles post because... really, it's been 192 days since I promised this fic.


	3. Chapter 3

He used to think Hide was the sun, an unending source of light and energy, constant and never-changing. The other boy seemed to exude it from his pores, made not of carbon, oxygen, and strands of something as complex and mysterious as DNA, but of something infinitely more simple, more incomprehensible, the fusion of hydrogen, infinite and unending. As telomeres wore away and degraded, as mortals succumbed to the war time waged on them all, Hide would remain unchanged, as constant as dawn breaking over the far horizon.  
  
He used to think of Hide as home, the place to return to when life had left him bruised and raw, alone but never truly.  
  
But things have changed, or are changing, and the laws of the universe applies to Hide as well, to his relationship with Hide.  
  
Because Hide looks at him the same way he always does, or it feels like he does as much as it doesn’t. He looks at Kaneki, a man who has lived his life once as Kaneki Ken, a human, as Kaneki Ken, a ghoul, and as Sakaki Haise, a man lost in lies and in himself, and he smiles like he did when they were eight and he had held out his hand, sticky from sweets, and offered his friendship.  
  
Hide hasn’t changed, except he has, and so has Kaneki and their relationship, whatever they are now.  
  
It’s the way Hide seems to have taken a step back, maybe to see the bigger picture, to see the world that they have built with their hands, with their lives and the deaths of their friends, the guilty, the innocent, the lost. A step that is so small, but feels like an endless sea that has sprung up between them in the absence of Hide by his side, large and overwhelming.  
  
Nothing has changed, because Kaneki still knows Hide is home. He is where Kaneki turns to when lost and cast adrift, a lodestar in the night. He goes and he is welcomed with love and affection, with hugs and words of comfort and pointed remarks when needed. He is soothed when he is weepy, he is fed when he is hungry, cared for when he is hurt and confused; Hide is still what he was in middle school, high school, university. It’s different in that it’s not, or not different in that it is.  
  
Kaneki knows with a certainty that he’s insane, certifiably so if he cared enough to seek professional counsel. He doesn’t think he can be anything else, not anymore. He has to be, because there is no other answer for the strangeness he perceives between himself and Hide when he knows just as surely that nothing has changed (except, he is certain, everything has).  
  
He pursues Touka, or she pursues him, and he thinks maybe that is what was missing when he feels completed by her smile, the comforting weight of her fingers against the inside of his wrist. Her kiss is warm against his lips and he feels… something. Despite the knoweldge that he is damage, perhaps beyond repair, he thinks that, if he can have this, this _feeling_ , maybe he isn’t as broken as he thinks he is, as he knows he is. Maybe the distance he feels between himself and Hide are the paranoid delusions of a man who has lost faith in himself.  
  
It feels like he’s using Touka as much as it doesn’t. Things quickly narrow down to her, and somehow, Kaneki comes to the realization that Touka is his sun. She’s the one his world revolves around, it is her who leaves him with bated breath, heart caught in his throat. She makes him into a cliche, a man hopelessly in love with a woman too good for him; beautiful and wise, kind. Understanding. She loves him, despite the scars he hides and doesn’t share, not even with her, and he cannot imagine his life without her, without her sharp words when he is too wrapped up in himself, absorbed in his own wants and desires. She’s good for him because he gets caught up, swept up in the turbulent waters of life, and she is steady and unflinching, a place to moor himself lest he be caught up in the latest storm he creates himself with his anxiety, uncertainty, and misplaced righteousness. She keeps him on the right course, and he tells her that, whispers it into her lips as he holds her close to him and he thinks, _this is a happiness I never dared to dream of_.  
  
This happiness is because of Hide, he knows. His friend has done everything he could to guide him to Touka, had gently coaxed him into letting go of the guilt and self-loathing that had kept him from allowing himself to accept her affections. To love her. Hide, who had spent many a sleepless nights listening to Kaneki’s confused and angry tears, his tantrums when he and Touka, both too stubborn and hardheaded to back down, escalate to untold extremes, even when both acknowledged their wrongs. Hide says he a vindictive streak he likes to hide, that his biggest secret is that he actually likes being anguished and tragic. _That’s what made you such a good actor_ , Hide had said once, when Kaneki was red-eyed and wrapped in the blond’s comforter and arms. _You have a flair for drama._  
  
They are the words that ring in his head when he is bent forward in supplication before the Kirishima family grave, asking for their daughter’s hand in marriage, and he is momentarily mortified by the truth in the other man’s words. He had never considered himself any of those things.  
  
  
  
But then again, Hide had always known Kaneki better than Kaneki did.

 

\--

 

He rethinks his world and the definitions he has given it and decides, _Hide isn’t the sun, he is gravity. Everything I have now is because he brought it to me._

  
\--

  
Hide is his best man, as if there was anything else he could be.  
  
_Family_ , something in him says. _A place to belong_.  
  
Except that’s wrong, he thinks, because it sounds inaccurate, clumsy.   
  
Touka, now his wife, is family. She is where he belongs; she is everything.  
  
Ayato, too, is family, and Hinami will be as well, one day, Kaneki is certain. It is only a matter of time.  
  
Hide is…  
  
Family does not sit well, it feels like a shoe that is too small, pinched and overstuffed. It doesn’t quite convey… enough. But Kaneki doesn’t know what could be more than family. Family is lacking, friend even more inadequate  
  
He thinks there should be a word for what they are.  
  
Hide will always be there. Hide was the first person to love him, truly and unconditionally, to care for him without reservation. Hide, he thinks, is someone he cannot live without, like Touka. He tries to imagine himself, as he is now, without ever having met the blond child with a smile too big for his face, heart larger than the world. He thinks he wouldn’t be who he is now. Perhaps he would be, but he doesn’t think he could be, can’t imagine him surviving the years at his aunt’s without him, the crippling isolation he felt even when surrounded by people, his classmates, his aunt, uncle, and cousin. He thinks perhaps he wouldn’t know how to love in a way that wasn’t selfishly until he met Touka, or, perhaps, never at all.  
  
He thinks Hide is a catalyst, what spurred growth in him as a person when there was nothing else to encourage it.  
  
He frowns, deep in thought, and Touka finishes her dance with Hide and stands before him, eyes wet at the edges, hands on her hips. He doesn’t know what words exchanged between them. He had seen Hide wipe tears from Touka’s eyes, but he thinks they weren’t bad. She smiles, and while the edges of it are wobbly, he knows her well enough to know what is overwhelming her is gratitude. She stubbornly blinks away the wetness, makes herself look larger and more intimidating, and Kaneki cannot help the swell of love that suffuses him whenever he looks at her and thinks, _She married me_.  “Normally, I wouldn’t say anything if you were your usual reclusive self, but this is our wedding, and you’re not allowed to sit meekly behind the table and watch everyone else dance with me. We’re married. Dance with your wife, Kaneki Ken.”  
  
“O-of course,” he says, ears heated and palms sweaty.  
  
Hide dances past them, twirls Hinami with expertise, the flair of her soft lilac dress brushing against his leg. “Don’t worry so much, she married you despite knowing how hopeless you are,” Hide whispers, leaning in. His lips brush Kaneki’s ear and the short hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, goosepimples radiating out from the source.  
  
He scowls, and Hide waltzes away laughing, Hinami’s smile soft and knowing over his shoulder.  
  
“He’s right, you know. You stepping on my toes a couple of times won’t make me demand an immediate divorce. It will, however, require you compensate me with a _very_ nice foot massage.”

  
\--

  
He tries to tell himself it’s just early marriage jitters.  
  
They’ve been married long enough that they’ve settled down, have developed a routine that is just-so. He wakes up, gets a pot of coffee started, and wanders into the bathroom to shave and shower, while Touka heats whatever leftovers they had from last night that didn’t quite make it into the bento. They sit down for breakfast together before he cleans up and washes the dishes as she gets ready for the day.  
  
It’s surprisingly normal. Two ghouls who are adults and married, doing adult morning things.  
  
It feels surreal.  
  
He doesn’t know how he has such an idyllic marriage, such a happy life, not when he’s done things that he can never say in mixed company, can never say without guilt and the weight of so much sin suffocating him.  
  
Maybe that’s why he starts obsessing.  
  
Obsessing with how he has finally realized that he has been replaced, that Hide has a new best friend now, has had one for longer than Kaneki has noticed. It’s only fair, he thinks, because he has never appreciated the other man’s friendship enough. Afterall, he had not realized everything the blond had done for him until Nishiki had nearly killed him, until Hide had nearly killed himself in the sewers chasing after him, a ghoul and a fugitive, until the blondnearly did it again, cheerfully throwing himself into a war of ghouls, of monsters, when he is only a man, mortal, fragile, and weak. He thinks of all the little things Hide had done for him over the years, of the books Hide had rescued after being discarded by his aunt, of countless other things, and bitterly acknowledges why Hide has replaced him with Ayato.  
  
Ayato doesn’t take him for granted. Ayato listens to Hide’s problems, something Kaneki has come to realize he has never done. Ayato and Hide are equals, something Hide is not when he is with Kaneki.  
  
Touka doesn’t have time for his sullenness, and after the third time she finds him sprawled on their bed, looking heartbroken and tragic, she roughly tugs the sheets out from under him, rolling him off the bed, and huffs. “Enough navel gazing. Get up and go talk to Hide.”  
  
“You’re using that term incorrectly.”  
  
“I don’t _care_.” She all but bodily throws him out the door, and Kaneki swears he hears her mutter “ _Men_.”  
  
He slowly makes his way to Hide’s apartment, the first time he has been there since he had married, and awkwardly knocks on the door.  
  
Hide opens the door in a ratty T-shirt and boxers, and instead of rebuffing Kaneki for showing up unannounced, practically glows with joy. “Hey man! I haven’t seen you in ages! Do I have to remind you again that rabbits die of loneliness?” Those words ease the tight knot of jealousy and misery that had continued to grow in his gut. Hide has always known the right things to say.  
  
“You’re not a rabbit, and you could’ve dropped by too, you know.”  
  
“And disturb the newlyweds? What heartless soul would do that!”  
  
Kaneki smiles when he crosses Hide’s threshold. He feels something in him settle, an uneasiness that he had never been aware of until it had gone.

  
  
\--

  
Hide looks at his baby girl like he would hang the moon and stars in the sky for her, that he’d battle a thousand and one impossible creatures for her happiness, for her smile. Hide looks at his baby girl like the universe revolved around her, this tiny creature, pink and wrinkly, and so beautiful Kaneki’s heart hurts whenever he looks at her.  
  
Hide looks at Kaneki’s baby like she’s his, and, somehow, it seems more right than anything else in the world.  
  
“I’ve always liked the name Emi,” Hide says wetly, smiling down at her.  
  
Later, when Hide has gone home with Ayato and Emi has been put to rest, Kaneki looks at the scrap of paper with Hide’s messy handwriting.  
  
_Emi_ , it says in soft graphite. _A beautiful blessing,_ the kanji read.  
  
Kaneki cries, and Touka calls him a fool, but she’s crying too, and he doesn’t know why either of them are.  
  
Somehow, his heart hurts.

  
  
\--

  
Emi is completely smitten with her favorite Hi-chan, and Kaneki feels completely abandoned and tossed aside.  
  
He tries to win her favor with treats. She stays resolutely where she is in Hide’s lap, head turned away in the huffy, dramatic way only children can achieve. She’s not easily swayed, his baby girl.  
  
He thinks he has a chance with Asahi, but it quickly becomes clear he’s more attached to his mother than either Kaneki or Hide.  
  
“Don’t be sulky, Ken,” Touka laughs. “Daddy’s little girl, mama’s little boy.”  
  
“That’s not fair,” he grouses. “Hide stole her from me.”  
  
  
\--  
  
  
The biggest punch in the gut is when neither of his children come to him for their romantic woes. It only slightly mollifies him that they don’t turn to Touka, either.  
  
“You’re so spiteful,” she says mildly as she reads the latest article on ghoul genetics.  
  
“Hide’s taken all the good fatherly bits from me.” He tries not to whine. He most definitely is whining.  
  
Something about her entire countenance shifts and she pauses, actually licks her thumb before turning a page, something they had both agreed is utterly disgusting and deplorable behavior. She does it anyways. He knows she’s just doing it to buy herself time, can sense her turn something in her mind over and over again. She chews on her lip. She opens her mouth. She closes it, turns another page despite failing to read anything at all. “I think,” she says finally, putting down the magazine, “you are misunderstanding the situation. There are just some things that are easier to discuss with people who aren’t your parents. It’s not that they love Hide more, or that they consider him more fatherly. It’s because he’s Hide. He’s their favorite uncle, and he practically raised them with us.”  
  
“But he’s not their parent.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Kaneki knows it’s not what she means to say, but he lets it go. He has his own secrets, and the only reason why their marriage works is because they love each other and respect each others’ boundaries.  
  
He tries to remind himself of this as he attempts to piece together the truth she didn’t say.

  
  
\--

  
Emi and Asahi are adults now, and have moved away from him and Touka. Once again, he feels abandoned and unwanted, and he remembers the old hurt that has stayed since they were children and preferred Hide over him. He knows it’s childish, petulant, to feel envious of how fond of his children were of Hide, of how fond they still are of him, to begrudge them of their independence now that they have left home to pave their own paths, even if they lead away from him.  
  
Hide nurses a beer as Kaneki puts forth all his energy into becoming disgustingly plastered and weepy.  
  
“My kids are leaving meeee…” he moans into the bar’s beautifully burnished surface.  
  
Hide has long since given up comforting him and has resigned himself to babysitting. Kaneki knows he should feel bad, and he does, a bit, but a bitter part of himself tells himself Hide doesn’t understand his pain. It’s not his children leaving him all alone.  
  
He’s being unfair and he hates himself for it. He is proud of himself for never voicing it, no matter how loose his tongue gets as he downs more and more shots. He’s a father whose children are leaving and he’s miserable, he’s allowed to be a little unfair. Just for one night.

  
  
\--

  
Touka cries at Emi’s wedding, and Kaneki assures her it doesn’t mean Emi is leaving them.  
  
He thinks of that evening he spent, wasted and embarrassingly self-absorbed with his misery over his children’s flight from the proverbial nest, was worth it if it means he can comfort his wife now. Because he had woken up from his drunken stupor, in bed, with the knowledge that it had been Hide who had ferried him from the pub to his apartment, that it had been Touka who had divested him of his tie so he didn’t choke himself in his sleep, and, when he checked the bedstand, he found a note from Hide with the most hideous scribble of him under the words ‘ _Be good and listen to your wife. Drink lots of water to stave off that hangover_.’  
  
He’ll always have Touka and Hide. Emi and Asahi still call despite leaving to live their own lives, still visit on holidays despite the hours they spend in transit and the scant few days they can stay.  
  
People leave, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone.  
  
Not everyone is his mother.  
  
Touka’s tears continue to fall even as he strokes her back, as he murmurs softly in her ear.  
  
It hurts, he knows, but things will be okay. He’s sure she’ll understand one day.  
  
  
  
It’s not goodbye.  
  
  
\--

  
  
Hide shows up on their doorstep without warning. He rocks on his heels as he invites him out for drinks, scratches the back of his head after he hedges around _something_. Hide’s shifty, and it throws Kaneki off center. It’s not like Hide to be so awkward, even when he lies through his teeth, and something in him thinks, _It’s finally happened_. They’re past fifty, but it’s not too late. Hide has finally found someone.  
  
He’s happy for Hide, is eager as he wraps a scarf around his neck after pulling on a thick coat, and kisses his wife before leaving.  
  
Touka looked a bit off, he knows, but she has been a bit under the weather for the past few days, something he can discuss with Hide after the good news. Hide has always had the best advice.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The words “ _I’m moving_ ” sound wrong. The words were never meant to exist together, not with Hide. Not from Hide.  
  
He feels wretched, angry and betrayed. He cannot stand Hide’s touch, jerks back when the man reaches out to --to… placate him. To comfort him. To…  
  
Banjou could walk away, could leave Tokyo after the end of everything, after the toll the entire struggle between Aogiri, V, and the CCG had taken from him. Yomo could abandon them, could return to the ward he had lived in with his sister, could live in relative quiet obscurity if that was what he desired. Emi and Asahi could forge their own lives, create their own families, away from home, miles and miles away from Tokyo, from him.  
  
But Hide can’t leave.  
  
He says angry, hurtful words because he has been hurt, has been suckerpunched by the one person he never thought would do that to him. He is reeling from it, from the tangled mess of emotions that have him feeling faintly nauseous and in need of several drinks.  
  
So he drinks, drinks until it’s difficult to think too hard about anything let alone how the one person he had always been sure would never leave him abandons him, like…  
  
“Why are you leaving me.” He breathes wetly into Hide’s neck as the other man levers him up from his seat, pays their tab, and navigates them out the pub and onto the street. “Don’t go,” he continues, too drunk to care he is weepy, too hurt to be anything but wounded. “Don’t leave like Emi and Asahi. Don’t go away like mother…” Hide stiffens under him, and the blond’s grip on his wrist is bordering painful.  
  
“I’m always here for you, Kaneki. If you ever need me, I’ll fly up to Tokyo in a heartbeat. I’m not abandoning you. I’ve got your back forever.” Hide’s voice is shaking, has taken on that slightly nasal quality that means Hide is trying not to cry. Vaguely, he is aware he should feel terrible, but he isn’t the one who has dropped the metaphorical atom bomb on Hiroshima.  
  
“You’re leaving me,” he repeats forlornly, vindictive and unfair, because that’s who he is without Hide, he tells himself. He needs Hide, here, with him.  
  
They don’t say anything else until they reach Kaneki’s house. Hide apologizes to Touka as he surrenders her husband to her care. He kisses her cheek and apologizes again, voice cracking slightly, and Kaneki knows he’s crying. _That’s fair_ , Kaneki thinks as Touka’s blouse gets wetter and wetter with his tears, the two of them standing in their entranceway. _I’m crying. Touka is too_.  
  
Hide is the moon and stars, Kaneki decides as Touka’s arms encircle him, because he is lost when Hide is gone.

  
\--

  
  
Ayato has never liked him, and, Kaneki suspects, he never will.  
  
Kaneki is okay with this, understands, in the vague, nebulous way an only child with minimal social skills and abundant awkwardness does, that this is probably a sibling thing. No one is ever good enough for their sister, no matter who they are. He thinks he can understand that sentiment --no matter how wonderful his son-in-law is, a tiny part of Kaneki thinks the man is lucky to have Emi in his life, that he doesn’t quite deserve Emi.  
  
Or, he had thought he understood, except Ayato’s dislike has transformed into something very akin to anger.  
  
And Kaneki wants to be angry in return, because there’s no reason for Ayato to treat him the way he does now, the not-so-subtle abuse the other man aims his way each time they meet, cruel and barbed words that do more damage than Kaneki would like to let on.  
  
He wants to.  
  
Except he knows why Ayato is livid, because it has all finally clicked, and Kaneki thinks he hates himself a little, too.  
  
Because the way Hide looked at him has never changed. Because the blond has always looked at him as if he was… Everything. Because he has never looked at anyone the way he looked at Kaneki, has never touched anyone the way he touched Kaneki, has never cared for anyone the way he did for Kaneki.  
  
Because Hide loves him, has loved him for years and years and years. Because Hide had loved him when he played matchmaker between Kaneki and Touka, had loved him while he was engaged to Touka, had loved him during the wedding, has continued to love him through their marriage. Because Hide chooses to continue to love him despite knowing he can’t return the other man’s affections. Because Hide loves him, and Kaneki only understands now, after the other man has absconded to a different city, away from him.  
  
Hide loves him, and, Kaneki thinks, after nearly fifty years, it has finally broken him. He had never seen Hide with those eyes, before, so resigned and a little lost. Hide had said he needed to find something in Shizuoka.  
  
It’s not a lie, not entirely.  
  
He needs distance, Kaneki understands. Distance to nurse a heart he has finally allowed to break, distance to move on, distance to find himself after he has spent his entire life building everything around Kaneki.  
  
Ayato doesn’t like him because Hide is important to the younger ghoul, because he can’t stand to see his friend hurting over someone who doesn’t deserve it. Kaneki hates to see Hide hurting too, hates that he has spent so long ignorant to his dearest friend’s misery, hates that he is the source of it.  
  
So Ayato slings potshots at him whenever they meet, and Kaneki lets him, because he understands.  
  
He understands, but it doesn’t blunt the pain that results from Hide’s absence, the realization that he is the reason why Hide can’t stay. There are so many words unsaid, that cannot be said, and he is still so hurt and angry that Hide would leave instead of saying anything important, the only thing that mattered.  
  
It’s just running away if he walks out of Kaneki’s life without ever saying anything.  
  
  
\--

  
He had cried when they got the phone call, had realized with the startling clarity that comes with anguish, with the jolt of understanding that leaves a person cold and empty.  
  
  
_He’s leaving me_ , he realizes. _He’s leaving me_.

  
Hide hadn’t truly left when he went down to Shizuoka. They both knew Hide wouldn’t return unless Kaneki sought him out --a clean break, that was what the relocation had been. He had left but, the door hadn’t been closed --if ever Kaneki called out for him, Hide would return. Because Hide hadn’t lied, if ever Kaneki needed him, Hide would be there.  
  
Death, though, is forever closing that door Hide had left open. Death means Hide is well and truly leaving, never to return.

  
  
\--

  
  
Hide’s parents had passed on long before him, and he is the last Nagachika. Was.  
  
Kaneki sits with Touka and his children as the chief mourners during the ceremony. He sees people from middle school and high school. Some of them, he recognizes; others, he does not. He sees them, and faintly remembers a few of them from his wedding, and realizes he has not kept in touch with any of them. Hide, however, had.  
  
Hide’s wake feels endless, a stream of people who continuously walk up to offer their condolences, to talk of a Hide that Kaneki never knew, of a Hide Kaneki has always known. Kaneki takes their condolences and their sympathy and their stories that he does not know and feels empty and numb, an imposter in mourner’s clothing.  
  
When the funeral is at last over and it is just them, the Kaneki and Kirishima families, Kaneki feels drained. They go through the motions of clearing up the area, of preparing for the cremation.  
  
Ayato picks up Hide’s funeral picture and makes a wounded noise. Hinami hurries to his side, guides his head to her shoulder and soothes him as he he dissolves into tears. “My brother is dead,” he whispers. The only comfort she can give are words, murmurmed softly into his ears as her fingers comb through his hair.  
  
Touka looks away, eyes wet. Emi doesn’t pretend to hide her tears, and Asahi comforts her, more composed, but just barely.  
  
Kaneki looks at his hands and feels wretched with no tears to shed.

  
\--  
  
  
“I hate you, I fucking hate you.” Every muscle in his body is taught, is ready for a fight, 175 centimeters of pure rage ready to break every bone in Kaneki’s body like Kaneki had done to Ayato so many years ago. “You’re a _piece of shit_ , but --but my sister loves you and Hina calls you brother, and Nagachika --Hide…” Ayato’s hands clench and unclench, his fingernails dig bloody gouges into his palms and blood drips from them. “You only know how to take, you bastard. He…” Ayato rubs his hands over his face in frustration, paints himself with his own blood, a picture of despair and vindicated fury. There are words he wants to say, words he feels he can’t say, Kaneki knows. So the younger ghoul walks away, kakugan glowing brightly in the darkness of the night.  
  
“ _He deserved better_ ,” Ayato spits out as he leaves.  
  
Kaneki watches the younger man leave, looks down at Hide’s framed funeral photo and feels his own temper flare.  
  
“You’re cruel, Hide. _So cruel_.” Now that he finally says it, everything spills forth so naturally; the anger, the tears. “You took the choice away from me. You decided I’d be happier with a woman, with children. You decided for me that I could never love you, not the way you wanted. You decided for me, and by the time I had realized, it was too late for me to love you any other way but the way I already had. Maybe you were right, too. I _am_ happy, I cannot imagine a life without Touka or my children. I can’t deny the joy they brought to my life, how fulfilled my life has been because I have them in it.” Kaneki wants to break something but there’s nothing to break but the photo, so he clings to it as if he will be the one that shatters should his hold slacken. There is so much resentment built up in him, so much regret, and he has no outlet, the one person who he should have been honest with is gone. “But damn you -- _damn you --_ maybe I could have loved you the way you wanted me to. I could have, I know I could have, but you took the choice away from me. Maybe we could have been happy together, just as happy as I am now. Maybe Touka could have been, too, with someone other than me. And gods, I don’t regret my marriage, I don’t regret my children, but…”  
  
He blinks up at the stars, at the waning moon, and fights the urge to screech at the heavens to see if Hide could hear him, hear his sorrow, his anger, his pain. “Look at how you’ve left me, Nagachika Hideyoshi! I am an old man with so many regrets, with so many words left unsaid, because you were too much of a coward to ever be honest with me!”  
  
He lets himself cry until he cannot anymore.  
  
When he is empty, without another tear to shed, he wipes away the last traces of his grief. He turns to look at the sea, the reason why Hide had moved down to Shizuoka at all, and steels himself for the next day. The final farewell.

  
\--

  
They meet in Shizuoka, by the sea that had enamoured Hide the first time he had walked down its shores, Hide’s ashes in Kaneki’s hands.  
  
He traces the characters on the urn with one thumb as he faces the sea. The water laps at his feet, eager for what he has in his hands. _Give him to us_ , the sea seems to say as it seeps into his shoes, his slacks. _We’re waiting for him_.  
  
  
He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to say goodbye.  
  
  
He opens the urn and passes it to Touka.  
  
“You were the dearest friend,” she says as she takes a handful of ash. “You were family. I miss you already, you don’t know how much.” Touka slowly releases the ash into the wind, lets it carries it out to the sea and beyond.  
  
Emi accepts the urn and struggles to find words. “You were my first love,” she manages through tears. “You were the kindest person I knew.”  
  
“You were a second father,” Asahi says softly as he releases his fistful, and watches it scatter across the sparkling sea. “You… I… I hope I was a son to you.”  
  
“You were my brother. You _are_ my brother. I…” Ayato hesitates. Hinami squeezes his arm reassuringly. “You will never be forgotten.”  
  
“Hide,” Hinami says to the sea. “You are precious to me, and you always will be. We love you.” Her hand searches for Ayato's after she has relinquished her share of Hide to the sea, grounding the both of them.   
  
The urn passes from person to person until, finally, it comes to Amon, who had been startled to have been invited, awkwardly accepts the urn and considers it for a long, long time. “Nagachika… you were a good man. The world is a little less without you.”  
  
Finally, with everyone else finished, Amon walks the urn back to Kaneki.  
  
Kaneki still isn’t ready; he is acutely aware he will never be.  
  
“The Greeks believed in four kinds of love. They believed in Agape, unconditional love, in Philia, platonic love, in Storge, filial love, and in Eros, erotic and romantic love.” He feels all their eyes on him; he feels sick. Sick with anxiety, with grief, with mourning. “I have spent my entire life trying to define you. Once, I called you the sun that kept my life from plunging into darkness. Then, I called you gravity, the force that brought the people in my life together. When you left to come here, I came to the conclusion that you were the moon and stars, that without you, I didn’t know how to navigate my life. Because you had never left me before; I was always the one leaving you.” Kaneki takes a fistful, lets the ash slowly slip through his fingers and dance away on the evening breeze. “I know what you are now, though.”  
  
He turns over the urn, watches as the last of Hide leaves them, a fading trail in the sky.  
  
  
  
  
  
“You’re love.”  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who has stayed with this series until now, thank you. The updates between this fic has been sparse and interspersed with long periods of quiet so thank you so much for staying until the end.
> 
> I say "the end," and some of you may have noticed how I have changed the parts from 3 to 4, but, ultimately, this series is done. I have one more installment planned which consists of in-depth dreams from various points in Hide's life. It will hopefully explain some of Hide's motivations more clearly, such as why, until the end, he only ever addresses Kaneki by his surname and never by Ken, despite how close they are and how long they have known each other. It will essentially serve as an epilogue and I'm not quite sure if it'd be best posted alongside these chapters or as a standalone like the other additional installments. 
> 
> There are a couple of segments which make me a bit unsure of how they will be received. The biggest one is the last section where Kaneki comes to terms with what Hide means to him. To some of you, this may contradict Touka's ending, which suggests that Kaneki does not know of Hide's true feelings (or at least, the rest of the cast do not know it). Kaneki has never been forthright with his realization of Hide's feelings for him and he never plans on telling everyone. He doesn't want to hear about Hide's feelings from anyone but _Hide_ and he doesn't want to talk about it. With anyone. His failure to realize how dearly his friend loved him is one of his greatest shames and it's not something he wants to discuss. Touka (and everyone else) assumes that Kaneki's association of love with Hide is in fact Kaneki coming to terms with his own feelings for Hide (which is not an inaccurate interpretation, although to Kaneki, it was what Hide represented to him). 
> 
> What matters to Touka is not necessarily that Kaneki knows the truth of Hide's feelings, but that Hide be honest with Kaneki. This stems from a belief that everyone deserves the truth and that finally confessing will help heal some of the pain that plagues Hide's heart that results from words left unsaid. So, while she is clearly upset with Hide during the closing scene in her chapter, she would not be mollified if she knew that Kaneki is aware of Kaneki's feelings. She will always be disappointed in Hide for not being honest with Kaneki. 
> 
> Ultimately, this entire series has been a journey of differing facets of love and how people experience it differently from person to person as well as how they express it. Hide was not right for, as Kaneki perceives it, manipulating events so that they would unfold the way he wanted it to (Kaneki happy and fulfilled with a family of his own) but neither can anyone say he was wrong for never saying anything, particularly after Kaneki has married and settled down with a family (no one wants or needs a homewrecker). 
> 
> Kaneki loves Hide and resents him for taking away something as essential to life as choice. The choice to live his life as he wanted. Instead, Hide had decided for him that Kaneki could never love him, could never be happy with him, or as happy as fulfilled with him as opposed to Touka, who could provide Kaneki with things Hide couldn't. A family and a life without shame and the stigma of being in a committed gay relationship.
> 
> Ayato was probably the character I had the most fun writing since he feels so intensely in this AU. He is deeply loyal to the people he loves, which includes Touka, Hinami, and Hide before the children come along. He's fiercely loyal and protective, too arguable extremes, and while he acknowledges that Kaneki is a good husband and father, he cannot accept or like Kaneki as the person who causes the man he considers his brother so much pain, unfair as it may be. He embodies so many contradictions, it's very fun to write. In the end, what's most important to him is honoring Hide's wishes and not necessarily whether or not it was right to keep his [Hide's] feelings hidden or if Kaneki deserved to know.
> 
> If you have any questions about this AU, feel free to drop an [ask](http://fweeble.tumblr.com/ask) on my tumblr. If I have the time, I might write a short (less than 1k) installment for it. It has been a blast playing in this sandbox and I wouldn't mind returning to it every once in awhile. c:


End file.
